


Come What May

by daydreamn019



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Afterlife, Angst, Canonical Character Death, F/M, I tried to be canon compliant, RvB Fill in the Blanks, Sort Of, but it’s been a Hot Minute since i’ve watched those seasons, from the pov of the dead character tho, i extend the blanks and then fill them, s9 and 13 finales, so sorry for any inconsistencies, you know the ones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-08-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:20:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25851238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daydreamn019/pseuds/daydreamn019
Summary: Reaching the end of the line; and what it feels like to be forgotten, fragmented, and found again.
Relationships: AI Program Epsilon | Leonard Church/Agent Texas | AI Program Beta
Comments: 10
Kudos: 22





	Come What May

**Author's Note:**

> i originally didnt write this for rvb fill in the blanks week, but i figured it somewhat aligned w/ today's prompt, missing final moments. though this isnt a fic so much as a ramble about chex feelings in 3k words, because i have a lot of them

Tex knows it’s the end before it comes.

She knows it even before the ground starts shaking and the sky cracks open like it’s Armageddon. She feels it in the bones that aren’t there beneath her armor, in the wires that run deeper than the blood that she once bled. 

“Come sit with me,” Church tells her, once it’s just them and the crumbling world beneath their feet. “I got some great seats for the end of the world. I saved you one.”

He’s taken off his helmet, and his expression is resigned and sincere and almost soft, the same look he had seeing off Tucker and Caboose in the tank even though Tex isn’t going anywhere right now. He doesn’t ask her to take off her own, and she wouldn’t even if he did. She’s seen what’s underneath, blue eyes and blond hair in the mirror, not a carbon copy of Allison but close enough, in the uncanny valley, that it makes her synthetic skin crawl.

“Sure you wanna do this?” she asks, but she knows the answer already. She can see it in his off-green eyes, bluer than the Alpha’s and brighter than the Director’s. 

He’s getting ready to say goodbye. 

Tex is pretty sure she figures it out before he does, because he’s still rambling like it’ll stretch the seconds between now and the end of the world. It’s not a surprise. It’s what normal people _do,_ when they know time’s running out. But they’re the furthest thing from normal, space warriors trapped together in a world coming apart at its seams, and the last goodbye Beta said somehow lingers, sour, on Tex’s tongue. 

Still, she joins him by the edge of Blue Base’s roof, sitting with her legs dangling over the side and a distance between them that they can easily bridge, but don’t quite yet. The green hills of Blood Gulch extend before them, Sheila a dot in the distance. The ground trembles again.

“Any regrets?” Tex asks, because fine, she’ll be guilty of stretching the seconds too. Dimly she thinks of red hair and green eyes, but she’s not anxious to go down her own list. She glances at Church, the furrow of his brow like he’s thinking hard. He’s been doing plenty of that, lately. 

“A few,” he says after a moment, and doesn’t elaborate much, not on the thoughts that really matter. He won’t look directly at her as he talks, fiddling with the sniper rifle in his lap. An unconscious denial, perhaps, even with his mind set.

She almost snorts and calls him out for it _—getting cold feet?—_ but holds it back, for once. It’s hard enough to make peace with your final moments. At least, come what may, they always seem to face them together. She’s coming along for the ride, till the end of the line. 

_What can I say? I guess we were inseparable._

Except...she knows what he knows. They’re cut from the same cloth, she and Epsilon. Quite literal shadows of their former selves, who were already shadows to begin with.

And the more Church talks, the more Tex thinks she understands what the end of the world means, really, for them. He brought her back again, a shadow of a shadow, and she’s sure Beta would’ve been really fucking pissed at him for it. But Beta’s long gone and Allison, even longer dead; and now Tex is reaching her last stop as well.

But Church—Epsilon? She’s not so sure. She looks at him, the tension bleeding from his shoulders as he stares out at Blood Gulch, and it’s never been clearer that he’s _memory._ The zeroes and ones and recollections make up his face, the base beneath them, the rolling hills and rock cliffs. They make up _her._

She’s memory, too. Just a memory, a ghost, a fragment. The world around them is failing, and she knows a thing or two about failure, about coming along for the ride until she falls by the wayside. Who says the pattern’s breaking here?

Even if the world ends, Epsilon, with all his memories, is not ending with it. 

Church finally looks back at her, and his gaze is intent, but still soft at the edges. Like he’s figuring out what to do, what to say, to cleanly wrap up years worth of memories between them. At least until he brings her back again, because he always just _needs a bit more time._

Unless...he doesn’t, this time around. Unless he’s really trying to say goodbye

Fine, Tex can stomach all this, accept her fate. Church hasn’t steered her wrong so far. But goodbyes are a line she doesn’t want him to cross even though she has, on that alien ship leaving a different Blood Gulch, and even before then in the rare crevices of memory that Church doesn’t quite recall. 

“Church.” She’s too good to let her voice crack or shake, but still, with the world around them collapsing it’s hard to keep steady. “I—”

The ground rumbles again, more intensely, and she almost misses the sound of groaning metal that creaks in tandem. But she certainly doesn’t miss the tear in the sky, splitting into halves like the world is trying to pull itself apart. The tremors don’t stop, thundering, and she curls her fingers around the ledge to steady herself for just a bit longer. 

It does really feel like a Doomsday scenario, she’s gotta give him that. 

She glances back at Church. He’s still studying her, almost like he’s trying to remember her every detail, committing her to memory one last time. It’s not Leonard’s expression when she tells him _don’t worry, you’ll see me again,_ or the Alpha’s eyes when she forces out a _goodbye_ and lets him rest. Whatever words she had rising in her throat die on her tongue. 

_See what happens when you treat something right?_

Church reaches out and takes her hand. Tex tries to find it in herself to be surprised that she lets him, but can’t. It’s the last time she’ll see him, after all. She can indulge his sentimental crap just this one time. 

_Yeah. Yeah, as a matter of fact, I think I do._

“I guess this is it,” Tex says, instead. End of the line and all that. It’s a hard pill to swallow, still, but she manages. It’s not the worst way to go.

But there’s a look in Church’s off-green eyes like he’s about to give some big speech, because he’s as dramatic of a bitch as he’s always been. Maybe something full of _goodbyes_ and introspection and all other kinds of bullshit, and his tone doesn’t help, either. He squeezes her hand lightly, but she can barely feel the pressure with the rumbling beneath them. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

And Tex doesn’t care how important it is, or how much time is left. Even if she’s a watered down version of Allison and Beta, she doesn’t think she can handle hearing whatever final farewells he’s trying to muster.

“Don’t say goodbye,” and the words taste too bitter, fit too well on her tongue. “I hate goodbyes.” 

She may know what Church knows, at least some of the parts that matter, but she has no idea what he’s going to say next. He shakes his head, insistent, and starts to say his piece, but each word lands like a farewell, sinking like an anchor.

_It was you, Tex, all along._

Maybe she gets what Church is rambling about. Maybe she even believes it. She drinks in the sight of him, his hand radiating false warmth into hers, and thinks about being found and seen and figured out. Always made again from memory, coming along for the ride and helping to make something more.

When Epsilon brought her back in that facility, far away and in another world, she needed to know who she was. And she’s still not too sure, yet. She’s not Allison, and he’s not Leonard. But who knows. Maybe Tex liked it better that way.

“I know how to fix all of this,” Church tells her, and the conviction in his tone is tinged bittersweet. “How to end this once and for all.” 

The ground trembles in anticipation for the parting shot. Just a simple three words. 

The realization strikes Tex a split second after, sucking the air out of her lungs as she stares at him, the sincerity in his eyes. She’d laugh if the end weren’t looming over them as they speak. “Are you going to say I love you?”

She says it without thinking, almost. And she knows she’s wrong as soon as Church’s expression crumbles, just the slightest, eyes widening and lips parting. He lets go of her hand and looks away, at the sky tearing itself into pieces and fragments above them. The weight of his gaze lingers until the end. 

“No,” he tells her, and maybe it’s then that the world begins to disintegrate. Maybe it’s then that the wires underneath her skin short-circuit and the memories between them fade. He doesn’t look back at her as the ground shakes and she tries to slide closer to him, tries to bridge a distance that seemed to have stretched miles in the last few seconds. The tremors crescendo, deafening, but it doesn’t drown out the three words that put a stop to all of this, for her—

_I forget you._

The world takes its sweet time to collapse, but Epsilon-Texas ends with neither bang nor whimper, a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment. She’s there and then she isn’t. She exists and then she doesn’t. It’s not the boom of an enemy soldier’s gun or the crackle of an electromagnetic pulse; it feels like static and white noise and silence.

It feels like nothing at all.

Being forgotten is different from being shot in the chest or vaporized by an energy surge. That’s the thing, when you’re made of memories. Weapons or tech can’t keep you down. The only thing that can is the person you’ve made the most memories with.

Ain’t that a bitch.

* * *

Somewhere, out there in the real world, the Epsilon unit opens, and Agent Texas rests.

There’s no way to deny the past when it catches up to you. So Epsilon pushes forward and buries her, every iteration, even the ones he finds after she’s gone. 

Tex doesn’t see Carolina or the Director again—a preserved pattern, at least, an inherited tragedy. She doesn’t see her own face on the screen telling him not to say goodbye; or her own helmet, visor shattered, touted like a trophy and testament to all her failures.

_And don’t worry, you’ll see me again._

Allison goes and the Director goes and Epsilon stays to make his own memories. The other fragments are with him till the end, trust and logic, happiness and fear, rage and deceit and ambition.

Sometimes he leaves, with scathing words or no words at all, and doesn’t say goodbye. But he always comes back, without fail. Without her.

Until he doesn’t.

* * *

Church knows it’s the end before it comes.

He knows it as soon as he finds the Meta suit in the Staff of Charon’s terminal and realizes there’s no other way. He feels it in the zeroes and ones that form his hologram, the weird lurch in his nonexistent heart as he looks at Tucker and Caboose and the others frozen in ready position. 

He just needs a bit more time, to say his piece. 

“I can’t run this suit as Epsilon,” he tells them in a message he hopes they’ll live to hear. He’s gotten quite good at saying goodbyes without actually saying them. “But if I erase my memories, if I deconstruct myself, the fragments I’ll leave behind will have the strength to get you through this.”

Delta nods at him, and Omega and Gamma flicker briefly by his side; Theta watches him with wide eyes as Sigma glows in tandem with the sparks on the door and the twins hover and merge and disappear. Epsilon can hear them whispering as he speaks, and he wonders if this is how the Alpha felt, surrounded by the original fragments before the EMP exploded.

But Epsilon is short one piece, still, even if he’s accepted that she’s long gone. He can’t help but glance at the black helmet in the corner of the room. 

He’s learned a lot about letting go in the past few years, more than the Director or the Alpha ever bothered to. He’s not just their shadow, but there are still parts of them that he can’t shake, that will always be holding him back.

He doesn’t expect them to understand him fully, when they listen back to the messages he’s leaving for them. But there was only one person in the world who ever could. 

That’s the thing, when you’re made of memories. Sometimes it’s best just to let go completely.

Who knows, maybe they’ll write epics about his heroic deeds when he’s gone. He’s sure this end will leave Tucker bitching and Caboose crying for at least a few years. They won’t be forgetting him any time soon.

_See you on the other side, Church._

But the guilt weighs down on him no matter how hard he tries to shake it, no matter how hard he tries to stretch the seconds between now and the end. His friends—because it’s the last time he’ll see them, fine, he’ll admit it—are motionless before him and it doesn’t seem fair, that they don’t get to say another word before he’s gone. They don’t get to ask him not to say goodbye.

That’s just how life is, though. It’s a hard pill to swallow. But Church is sure that come what may, they’ll be fine. He has faith that they’re in the right hands, even when he’s at the very end of the line.

_Ain’t that a bitch._

This time, the world doesn’t end with a shaking earth or splitting sky, but it doesn’t end with silence either. There’s shattering glass and pitch-black void, memories unraveling and splintering and crackling into energy. 

It all takes place in the blink of an eye, and only a little longer in A.I. time. Recollections pulled out of his code, names and faces and words flickering out of existence. Maybe it hurts, he doesn’t feel it. He doesn’t feel anything at all.

The last memory that leaves him does so painlessly, but the word echoes and lingers even as the Meta suit shuts down and the dust settles, and the light at the end of the tunnel winks out—

_Goodbye._

* * *

He doesn’t get to rest. 

He opens his eyes and sees nothing, at first. Just blankness. But then he looks down and sees his armor, not a hologram but solid cobalt blue. 

It doesn’t feel right. It’s not like being in the Epsilon unit, or someone’s implants, or the Alpha’s torture room. He’s not surrounded by coding or memories in a way he’s used to. It’s something else entirely, like swimming in static with his head stuffed full of cotton.

How did he even get here?

“Looks like you did a pretty shit job of letting me go, Church.”

The voice doesn’t startle him, for some reason. He turns around. There’s a figure in black armor standing behind him, helmetless, with dark eyes and light hair. For some reason it feels like he recognizes her. Like he knows her, even though she’s different.

She looks at him, expectant, and it’s something—maybe the curve of her lips, or the gravity beneath her eyes—that brings a name and memory to the forefront of his mind. 

_Tex._

Church remembers her. Not Allison, not Beta. Tex. Sitting with her at the end of the world and learning how to forget. It comes back to him, now, in rediscovered bits and pieces. Maybe he wasn’t as good at it as he thought.

He almost asks, _How are you even here?_ or _Where_ is _here?_ But he figures that if he doesn’t know, she won’t, either. And it’s not the most urgent thing on his mind anymore. 

Tex stares at him, still waiting for a response. Her eyes are more brown than blue and her hair is a few shades lighter, but it feels alright, somehow. More like her.

“What did I say?” He doesn’t know, actually, but the words come out of his mouth easily. “Sometimes the things you let go come back on their own.”

_Wow, guess the theory was proven right then. Nick of time._

Tex doesn’t say that this time, though. Her eyes narrow. “But I didn’t come back. You just left them.”

“I—” Church feels a rebuttal rise to his throat, but then he blinks, frowning. “Wait, left who?”

He knows he said something wrong as soon as Tex’s expression falters, just the slightest bit, eyes widening and lips parting. “You...don’t remember?”

Huh. He doesn’t. She must see it on his face, because she clarifies before he can respond.

“The Reds and Blues,” she says, slowly, eyes searching him for any sign of recognition. “You know, Tucker, Caboose, the other ones I don’t care about. You sacrificed your sorry ass to save them. And now you’re here.”

“I...did?” Their names sound familiar, if nothing else. That seems like a pretty big deal. So why doesn’t he remember doing that? Then another thought occurs to him. “Wait, how do _you_ know?”

Tex rolls her eyes like it’s obvious. “Because I know what you know, Church. I knew as soon as you got here. You just forgot.” 

“Then why do I remember you?”

That gives her a pause, at least, and she looks away. Church stares at her. She doesn’t look quite like Tex, but she _feels_ like her, whether it’s recollections or coding that screams her name at him. He wonders if she’s actually here, or if it’s just an post-death A.I. hallucination. He wonders, really, if there’s a difference.

He thought she was gone forever. Then again, now he is, too. 

“You erased all your memories,” Tex answers, finally. “I guess you just missed this one. You weren’t even supposed to still have it.”

_I forget you._

She doesn’t sound bitter, just matter-of-fact. Maybe a little relieved. She’s closer than before, almost directly in front of him, and almost subconsciously he reaches a hand out to touch her. She grabs his wrist gently, stopping him before he makes contact, but doesn’t berate him or let go. If anything, her eyes soften a fraction of a degree.

“At least he got his wish,” she says. “You found me again. Just took dying to do it.”

Right. Death. That’s what happened, right? Just not the conventional type. “Hey, are you saying I shouldn’t have?”

She makes a face at him. “No, asshole, I’m just...surprised. That you did.” 

He’s...not. Dimly, he can remember a glowing sword and sparks cutting through metal, scattered pieces of an armor suit and his friends and fragments’ voices.

_Not this time, buddy._

They were depending on him, Tucker and Caboose and the others. There was no other way. His chest aches and it felt the same as saying those three simple words to her. He...doesn’t remember so much as he feels. There are always imprints, impressions, ghosts that linger. Nothing is forgotten completely, and the proof is standing before him.

“I knew it was my last stop,” Church chooses to say. End of the line and all that. He’s had experience in saying goodbyes. He just hopes it wasn’t all for nothing.

“Come on, you just wanted a heroic death, didn’t you.” But Tex is studying him with understanding in her gaze, and her hand curls a little tighter around his. “I’m sure they’ll be fine.”

The conviction in her tone is tinged bittersweet. He blinks at her. “How do you know?”

“Because you did,” she answers, simple, and he can’t deny that logic. He isn’t stupid enough to leave his friends behind if they’re completely incompetent.

Come what may, they’ll always survive. And he’ll always find her again. 

Because that’s the thing, when you’re made of memories. Part of you will always live on with someone else, no matter how forgotten or fragmented. 

And besides, he never said goodbye. So that means he can’t really be gone, right? Not while there are still people who remember him. And not while he still remembers Tex. 

He squeezes her hand, and it feels tangible. Maybe that’s enough. Even with missing fragments, it feels like the remaining pieces are clicking into place. 

Church may not be able to see his friends’ happy ending. But he’s gotta say, he’s pretty damn satisfied with his own. 

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr: daydream-n019


End file.
